


Take My Arms That I Might Reach You

by gyzym



Category: Arrested Development
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-30
Updated: 2013-05-30
Packaged: 2017-12-13 09:51:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/822926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gyzym/pseuds/gyzym
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And now the story of a self-absorbed magician who found everything, and the one other self-absorbed magician who helped him put it all together. It's Gob's surprising character development.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Take My Arms That I Might Reach You

**Author's Note:**

> Behold, the final resting place of my last semblance of self control; spoilers for all of Season 4, don't say I didn't warn you; trigger-warning wise, if you've seen it in the show, it's fair game here; title, of course, from a certain Simon & Garfunkel song I hope you all have gotten to know. Oh, and there's always money in the banana stand. I said, _there's always money in the banana stand_.

**one.**

Tony doesn't remember their first time, but Gob does; to even things out, he takes a Forget-Me-Now after their second round. Mostly it's to rid himself of the memory of explaining to Tony that Tony chose to forget the first time, although Gob also really doesn't want to hold onto the part of the night where he gave the details of the whole thing with the masks and And -- Egg? -- whatever the hell her name is. 

At least, that's what Tony tells Gob he said the _next_ time they have sex, right before Tony explains that he decided not to roofie himself in order to hold on to the memory of Gob admitting to having sex with him. He means to use it for blackmail, but then forgets about it, because he's having sex with Gob. 

At least, that's what Gob tells Tony he said the next time they…. yeah, you can see where this is going. 

Gob's wasn't expecting it, but a mutual roofie circle turns out to be easier to manage than doing one solo. It's kind of more confusing, since you always know someone's missing something, but you never know what or who or how much; on the other hand, there's a lot fewer trips to that shady store with the old lady porn right there on full display, like anyone even buys that stuff. When Gob's out of Forget-Me-Nows, Tony usually has one, and vice versa, and it gets to be a habit, one of them popping a pill over their waffles. Or. Well. 'Habit' might be a strong word -- might, because in the circumstances Gob can't be sure if it's a strong word or not. It feels like a habit, Gob's pretty sure. Fairly sure. Probably best not to hold him to it. 

Other benefits of the mutual roofie circle include the way six weeks come and go and nobody winds up in the hospital with stage four syphilis. Gob thinks it's been six weeks, anyway; without the syphilis, it's kind of hard to know.

**two.**

"Wait," Gob says at some point. "If neither one us has syphilis yet, does that mean we're being… uh, what's the word for 'only having sex with one person?'" 

"Lying." Tony's stretched out on the floor of the model home, smoking what Gob is pretty sure is his fifth cigarette since he realized the smoke detector is actually a clay ashtray George Michael made as a kid that Gob hot-glued to the ceiling. They go through this every couple of days -- Tony realizing that the smoke detector isn't real, Gob remembering that Tony keeps forgetting the smoke detector isn't real, deciding to switch up their pill days to avoid going through this again and then forgetting to do it. It's nice. Homey. 

"Lying," Gob repeats thoughtfully. He turns it over in his mind for a few minutes -- it gels with his worldview, but that's kind of the whole problem. "See, that _sounds_ right, but I don't think it is, exactly. I don't mean saying we're only having sex with one person, I mean really doing it." 

" _Is_ there a word for that?" Tony makes a horrified face. "For being -- being -- whatever the word for it is?" 

"I think so," Gob says, swallowing around his revulsion.

Tony shakes his head, disgusted. "The world is a sick place." 

They agree to stop taking the Forget Me Nows, though, just to make sure that's not what's going on. After all, it's not like they can't start taking them again, if it turns out they're both being -- 

**three.**

"Faithful," Michael says, over lunch at the Balboa Club the next week. He asked Gob here to talk about something, probably; that's usually what he does. He definitely spent most of the afternoon blabbering on about something, although he has, since Gob interrupted with his question, stopped speaking in favor of looking at Gob suspiciously. "The word for the concept you're describing is 'faithful.' Why do you -- I mean, _you're_ not in a faithful relationship with somebody, are you?" 

Gob's face freezes. After a moment, he says, "I've made a huge," but, weirdly, he can't quite bring himself to say the word "mistake."

He tries anyway. Michael sighs and waves for the check, then leaves Gob sitting there alone, still struggling just to vocalize the "m." Some brother. 

**four.**

The phone rings at four in the morning, the screen displaying Tony's name, and Gob bites his lip and tries to resist answering. They'd agreed that it was better, to avoid what's obviously a twisted thing for both of them, what with all the feelings and the only sleeping with each other and -- 

"Tony?" Gob says breathlessly into the phone. "Fuck! I didn't mean to answer." 

"I didn't mean to call," Tony says, equally breathless. "I tried to have sex with someone else, Gob, and I couldn't do it! I mean, it makes sense that I couldn't do it with Sally Sitwell, one of her eyebrows fell into her drink -- "

"What? Ew!" 

"I know," Tony says, the horror draining out of his voice only to be replaced by indignation of another sort. "It's like, the fourth time, but she convinced me it was caterpillars before. You know what they say -- fool me once, shame on me, but fool me four times and I probably should've googled whether or not seventeen-year Portuguese fuzzy crawlers are really a thing." 

Gob, forgetting his frustration, rolls over onto his back and kicks his feet in the air. "I wouldn't beat yourself up. I mean, I'd believe that. All kinds of stuff finds its way up here from South America."

"That's what I said!" 

The conversation veers off from there, and all in all it takes both of them nearly forty minutes to cycle back to the original focus of the call: "I couldn't have sex with anyone else either!" Gob bursts out, remembering, in the middle of a story of how he's always had a fantasy about fucking someone who pretends to lose an arm halfway through. "I tried and it --" 

"It felt wrong to be with anyone else?" Tony says. He sounds as horrified as Gob feels. "Oh, god, what's happening to me?" 

"The same thing that's happening to me," Gob says. "I… I almost wonder…" 

"Did somebody," Tony whispers, voice cracking, as he crawls out from underneath the bed, "say 'wonder?'"

Gob should stop this right now, this sick, corrupted thing between them. If he's not careful, it'll get out of hand -- it already has, with both of them remembering everything and not wanting to fuck anyone else and doing a thing Tobias said was called 'emotional support,' when Gob described it to him, although Gob's been trying to discount that on the theory that Tobias said it. Still, it's enough to be worrying, to make Gob think that soon they'll be doing things like… like standing in some store together, laughing over wineglasses and feeling honestly fulfilled by that, or, worse, supplementing magic with some kind of stable income. Cold horror settles over Gob at the realization that none of these thoughts inspire cold horror in him. He has to run. He has to hide. He has to put his foot down.

"Oh, Tony," Gob says, and they fall together onto the bed. It's not what he was going for, but, in fairness, he does get a better blowjob out of it than his first plan would've provided. 

**five.**

"But we're not boyfriends, right?" Tony says, holding Gob's hand as they walk back to the car after dinner and a show. 

"Oh, right," Gob agrees hastily. "Definitely, right, right. That would be… wrong." 

"Weird." 

"Too much." 

"Gay," Tony says. "So… very… gay." 

It's a hungry whisper, which is when Gob notices they've turned to face each other, that their eyes are locked, that everything has suddenly gotten very interesting and exciting and a little bit like something he got arrested for once, but in a good way. He's opening his mouth to agree when Tony curls his lip and shoves him, with a surprisingly sexy lack of ceremony, into a nearby bush. 

"So, we agree," Gob says, stepping out of the bush twenty minutes later. "Boyfriends." 

"Sure," Tony says. He runs his finger through his hair; his grin is blazing. "Sure, that feels right." 

**six.**

"You're good with this, right?" Gob says, the night of Tony's big show. "We're going to keep it a secret." 

"Right," Tony says. He's straightening his bow tie; out of a sense of… of… Gob'll have to ask someone what the feeling is later, but a sense of _something_ , definitely -- he reaches out and knock Tony's hands away, does it himself. Tony beams at him. "A secret, yeah, because -- wait, no, it'd be great for me. I'm already the gay magician, this would just drive it home."

"Me," Gob says, while ignoring the admittedly not very loud voice in the back of his head informing him that he doesn't know how to tie a bow tie. "This is about me." 

"About... you," Tony repeats slowly, as though trying to learn the words. Gob understands -- even hearing someone else say them is confusing. "Right. Why, again?" 

Tony looks good in a bow tie, even one that's been twisted up into a horrible mockery of a knot, and Gob forgets what they were talking about in favor of grabbing Tony by the lapels and kissing him. Then he forgets about grabbing Tony's lapels in favor of groping Tony's ass, and Tony must forget some things too, because after an indeterminate amount of time Gob hears a roaring noise and finally pulls away from the kiss only to realize that the curtain has gone up and the whole audience is watching them. Also that Tony's bow tie has come off. Also that he's got a raging boner. 

"What's better than one gay magician?" Tony says, clearly improvising, after one panicked glance at Gob. But then he grabs Gob's hand and lifts it in the air as he cries, " _Two_ gay magicians!" and disappears in a puff of glitter, and when the crowd goes wild, Gob doesn't even notice. He's too busy trying to remember the last time someone looked at him in a panic and then decided including him was the solution; he's pretty sure it's never happened before. It's better, he decides, than the alternative. Maybe even a lot better. 

Gob remembers why the secret thing was a good idea -- President of the Bluth Company, no scandals, low profile, blah blah blah -- when he looks into the crowd and sees Michael standing against the wall with a hand over his eyes. Didn't even buy a ticket to see Gob's unanticipated promotion to being the other half of his secret boyfriend's act; some brother. 

**seven.**

Lucille listens to the entire story -- well, minus the sex parts, Gob's not _Buster_ \-- with the same pursed-lip disapproval she's been giving Gob his whole life. He's relieved, honestly. He'd been a little worried she'd do something horrible, like try to be supportive. 

"I do wish you were better at revenge," she says eventually. The rest of the family, having given up on the pretense of doing anything but watching this like street theater, lets out a collective breath. "Nothing to be done about it now, though." She snorts a laugh into her martini. "They're letting you fruits marry now, isn't that right? So I suppose when it's all over I'll have two gay son-in-laws." 

"Oh?" says Tobias. "Who's the other one?"

**eight.**

It's not like they mean to move in together. It's just that it's easy; Tony's place is nearby, and they TiVo basically the same things, and the freezer's already full of dead doves, so it's not a problem if Gob wants to slip a few of his own in here and there. Gob doesn't have much in the way of what you'd call worldly possessions, a fact he does his utmost to make up for by buying cheaply made garbage as quickly as possible, but Tony seems to like that about him. It's also possible he just likes cheaply made garbage, but either way, it's not proving to be a problem.

Not everything is good, of course -- sometimes Gob gets a case of the c'mons and Tony has to prod at him with his foot until he snaps out of it, and, also, Tony chokes on stuff. Like, a lot. Gob's getting good at the Heimlich, but worrying about someone else is worrying. Still, the worst it gets is still kind of a lot better than the best things have been before. (So is the sex. Gob's not sure if that means he's been gay all along or not, but he's hoping to avoid finding out, because he's pretty sure he doesn't want to know.) 

"It's actually working for you guys, isn't it?" Lindsay says one afternoon. Gob can't tell if she's jealous or confused; from experience, he knows it's possible that she's both, since those are the only two emotions it's possible to feel at the same time. 

"We don't even fight," Gob says. He's only saying it because he hasn't been able to inspire real jealousy in Lindsay since he was old enough to buy cigarettes and she wasn't, but he realizes after a second that it's true. It is working. They don't fight. Huh.

**nine.**

(Okay, there _was_ this one awkward time when Gob didn't realize until he got the guy's boxers down that he'd been fooling around with a dude in a Tony mask and not Tony himself, but that was an honest mixup, and not even a fight, really, except between Tony and his double, who wound up quitting in the end while citing something about "unreasonable expectations" and "not even swinging that way, what the hell." Now Gob just makes sure to yell "I WONDER if I'm going to have sex tonight," at least once before he sticks his tongue in Tony's mouth and things go fine.)

**ten.**

They go to Cinco a year after what Gob remembers as their first time and Tony doesn't remember at all, and about ten minutes in he hears it: _The Sound of Silence_ , rising like a curse in the back of his mind. He freezes, standing stock still in the middle of the boardwalk, because this can't be happening now -- he's just gotten used to it, his new life, his place in what's now a double magic act, having a side of the bed. He's… he's…. _happy_ , which is unfamiliar and strange and not overrated at all, actually, even though he's totally spent years telling everyone he knew -- so, his family -- that it would be. They'd all agreed, is the thing. Gob'd never known any better before. 

It takes him a second to realize that Tony is frozen too, and a second longer to recognize--

"That _fucking_ mariachi band," Tony says, loosening up in relief. "God, I don't know why they even play that song, it gets me every time. I thought… well, I guess this is sort of weird, but that's the song that plays in my head when things start to go really wrong." 

And, well, there's nothing to do with that, is there, except: "Same," Gob says, and smiles.


End file.
